Backing Up Azure File Storage to Azure Blob Storage

We are using Azure File Storage for keeping day to day company data and wanted to have that data backed up to an Azure Blob Storage as a safe repository. We are currently backing up Azure File Storage Data to Azure Blob Storage Data using a 3rd Party file backup and synchronization tool, GoodSync.

While Good Sync cannot yet connect directly to Azure File Storage, it does connect quickly and securely to Azure Blob Storage. GoodSync also connects easily to mapped network drives – and Azure File Storage containers can be set up as local SMB3 file shares on a machine that can access the Azure File Storage account.

We setup an Azure W10 VM with mapped network drives to Azure File Storage links which GoodSync can connect to and then automated the one-way differential backup of the Azure File Storage to Azure Blob Storage containers daily. Note that GoodSync has many different activation schedules to run various backup or synchronization schedules – one-way daily backup works best for our needs.

We are also using GoodSync now to backup our user’s company data from their laptops up to the Azure Blob Storage. As will be discussed in a future article, we have discovered that our local ISP is blocking port 445 which is required for SMB3 transport, so we cannot access Azure File Storage to set up convenient mapped network drives locally. From within an Azure VM, this is not a problem, but not all users have access to the company Azure VMs. GoodSync is allowing us to be able to backup local users’ company data and outlook files up to our Azure Blob Storage Account.

GoodSync is also used to back up the repository Blob Storage Account from Canada Central to another Blob Storage Account in Canada East, giving us another level of backup redundancy using a different Azure Region for geolocation redundancy. If anything goes wrong with our data access in the Azure Canada Central Blob Storage Account, we can easily access the backed up data in the Canada East Blob Storage Account, losing a maximum of 24 hours of data (since the backups between geolocations are done daily)